The Koan:

Questioner:  What is the meaning of the transcendental?

Po Chang:    It is the worldly.

Comment:

The Transcendental is a projection upward of the Worldly in the storage of knowledge in the physical cognition of the human brain.  The Worldly, including the experiences in and of the body and brain, is a deluded projection and fascination of the Transcendental.  Without the Transcendental, the Worldly cannot function and deceive the Transcendental, so the Worldly is a Self-deception.  Without the Worldly, there cannot be speculation, believing about the Transcendental or picturing It in the mind from the brain.  So the Transcendental becomes imaginary and not a direct Self-experiencing.

Clinging to the Transcendental as imagination is the false spirituality of brain-centered pretenders.  These are the cult-leaders and cult-followers who clash with worldly people and create unnecessary and superficial problems for themselves that prevent real and direct experiencing of the Transcendental.  So their assumed “transcendentalism” is just a form of Worldliness because only the Worldly can clash with the Worldly.  All social conflict about anything whatsoever is Worldly because the Transcendental is without conflict.

Clinging to the Worldly in stupid fascination with it through forces of desire and habit in Self-deceptive denial of the Transcendental causes such cognitive egos of ignorance to believe in false everyday realities and build up further karmas of degeneration, death and rebirth.

Because of the two stupid clingings to the Spiritual and the Worldly, Ancient Masters of Wisdom on Earth and throughout the Universe have always taught to cut-off the flow of Worldly projected and imaginary speculation through cultivation of gradually developed direct higher experiences, and, to awaken immediately from Worldly Self-deception in a sudden recognition of Transcendental Awareness of Being.  Hence, both the Gradual and the Sudden are indispensable.

Do not remain a pseudo-spiritual pretender who brags, explains and tries to impress and attract others, but deepen the practice of Zazen or Yoga, regulating your breathing and developing direct experiential Spirit of Transcendental Being or Noumenal Self-nature.  Do this privately and anonymously, giving up your imaginations and your ambition to advise others.

If you are in a skeptical brain-state of denial of the Transcendental, you better wake-up before your Worldly fascinations, bad habits and conflicts with others bring you into catastrophic suffering.  When a sleeping Spirit believes it is nothing but a Body-of-Matter, it only builds up prolonged barriers to real happiness and peace of mind.  Doing harm to others through negative thoughts, words and deeds only guarantees having to be harmed in return by others, both in this life and future lives as well.  Is any pleasure of physical living worth causing pain to yourself and others through wrong habits and wrong thinking?

Self-deception is what is called the causal or karmic body in Theosophy and Vedanta.  In Buddhism, it is the false ego or phenomenological subject as the stored-up consciousness of abstract essence of all experiences and actions it performs through the physical body or subtle mind.  Fascination with the Worldly in denial or ignorance of the Transcendental is the Great Error the Transcendental has cultivated from beginningless time in the mineral, vegetable, animal and ordinary human realms on innumerable planets.  This Self-deception, through lack of awakening to Transcendental Self-nature, gives the endless belief in self-limitation and inability to satisfy desires and ambitions.  Over and over again it makes one a conditioned creature of habits and wrong beliefs or disbeliefs based on outer race, nation, culture, religion and language.  In the teachings of Hindu Kashmir Shaiva, the Transcendental Self-nature, Shivatma or Godself, thus remains covered and veiled by three dirts:

1.     Anavamala:    Continuous identification with limited causal

consciousness.

2.     Mayiyamala:   Holding to an erroneous belief-system, worldview or

cosmogony based on duality of phenomenal subject and phenomenal object.

3.     Karmamala:    Being forced by cosmic circumstances to undergo

difficult results in one body after another on the physical

planet, coupled with rewards and pleasures that fail to endure and giving rise to a desire for personal immortality and success for undivine unenlightened ego.

The Transcendental Noumenal Self-nature is Supracausal and Superconscious.  It is the Great Essence revealed through direct Self-awakening beyond Time, Space and Causality.  When divine action is performed by Great Essence, as in speech or behavior to enlighten others, it is called Great Action.  Great Action is not causal or intellectually planned or calculated, but is totally spontaneous, natural and real.

Ordinary causal egos of karmic Worldliness, whether through clinging to the Worldly or the imaginary Transcendental, are in the Guest Position of false phenomenal self as a physical, subtle or causal body.  To be awake in the nondual Awareness of Being that is Noumenal Subject, is what is called the Host Position, which implies universal, all-pervasive oneness of Awareness.  But merely believing in Host Position is Guest Position, which, again, is the Worldly error of clinging to the imaginary or intellectually projected Transcendental.  So, even, if one studies Zen and other metaphysical or cosmic traditions and learns to handle concepts of phenomenal subject and Noumenal Subject, of Guest and Host, of Spirit Self and Social Self, of Tonal and Nagual, and so on, the lack of higher experiencing in meditation will only cause one to imagine one can distinguish Host and Guest for real when in reality one is only entertaining concepts and working with diagrams.  Hence the old saying, “A piece of cake drawn on paper will not satisfy hunger.”

Try to understand that My experiences are My experiences and not Yours, even if you fervently believe in Me and My experiences.  I cannot do or experience all that You must do and experience for Yourself on the Transcendental Level of Being.  It is good that You admire and respect both Ancient and Modern Masters of Wisdom on Earth and throughout the Universe, but only if You can be awake in Self-nature directly and cultivate Supreme Zazen or Yoga.

Another point:  One does not do Zazen or Yoga to gain an eventual Enlightenment; one does Zazen or Yoga because one has become suddenly Enlightened, thus in order to fulfill and complete the Enlightenment.  Only an awakened being of some direct glimpse of Noumenal Self or Universal Nondual Awareness can do real and all-fulfilling Zazen or Yoga that will sprout miraculous abilities and achieve the Five Divine Powers of Vajrakaya Buddha, such as we have seen in the Lotus Born Guru who taught in Ancient Tibet and demonstrated all this, which He continues to do to this day as a Defier-of-Death with many guises or unusual positions-of-consciousness in His endless performance of the Great Function.  Zazen is thus the developing, perfecting and immortalizing process of a Transcendentally Awake Vajrakaya Buddha for producing the Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya Buddha-bodies in that order, which the illumined Yogi, Sri Aurobindo, discussed at length in his book, The Synthesis of Yoga.  All of this is further brought about by Charles Luk in his translation of the treaties of Chao Pi Chen on Taoist cultivation of Immortality, where he states flat-out from his tradition that one cannot cultivate Eternal Life if one has not awakened to Essential Nature or Transcendental Self.  Hence, worldly people in states of ignorance who try to take herbs and pills, do health procedures and Yoga Breathing for Longevity without Sudden Awakening to Noumenal Self-nature are doomed to failure, eventual old age, unpreventable disease and death, thus only postponing the inevitable at most.

Zazen must be done as an expression and fulfillment of Enlightenment, not as an attempted cause of Enlightenment.  This is why most sitting sessions in Japanese Zendos, being whacked with sticks and striving toward Enlightenment are generally a great aberration or clinging to the imaginary Transcendental in Japan.  The Great Master, Ma Tsu, became Enlightened when his Master pointed out that clinging to a stubborn practice of Zazen or Yoga without being Enlightened only produces a further barrier to Enlightenment, such as someone trying to make a mirror by polishing a tile.  The helpful awakening of seekers through the right handling of their Great Potential requires spontaneous behaviors of Great Action on the part of the Enlightened Teacher.  Those who push their students with struggles of unenlightened Zazen are themselves unenlightened imitators clinging to a secondary bullshit cultivated over hundreds of years by a ritualistic and disciplinary culture.

Now, in all fairness to my Japanese friends of Zen Discipline, we can say that there is a kind of useful, supportive Zazen or Preparatory Kriya Yoga that prepares the ground for a great follow-through after Enlightenment.  Though it cannot be a direct cause of Enlightenment, it can be an indirect secondary cause, which depends a great deal on the actual nature of what is motivating the aspirant.  If, for instance, the aspirant is aiming at becoming a dazzling, sought-after and impressive Enlightened Master for fulfilling his Social Ego Ambition, then the Zazen is most definitely aberrated and should be stopped at once to “clear the air”.

In the writings of J. Krishnamurti, a semi-enlightened Teacher of independent intellectual observationism, we see innumerable examples of seasoned Yoga disciplinarians going to him in despair that after years and years of doing “all the right things” and practicing Zazen/Yoga Mediation or keeping still, they have not had the Great Realization of Transcendental Awakening.  They would ask what had gone wrong and J. Krishnamurti would rightly point-out that they were in exaggerated states of Spiritual ambition or clinging to the imaginary Transcendental.  He would point-out that they need to relax their whole effort and awaken to something beyond effort.  Many modern aspirants who practice some form of Zazen or Yoga Meditation are often oblivious to what happened to those old disciplinary meditators who found themselves seeking advice from someone like J. Krishnamurti.  Also, yet others in the past applied to Osho Rajneesh, a modern Hindu semi-enlightened Teacher, who would advise them along the same lines as J.Krishnamurti.  Osho Rajneesh has produced some useful volumes on Zen.

Many seekers of Zen Enlightenment are reincarnated ambitious Zazen Strivers who died in failure of their spiritual ambition, so they feel deeply but wrongly attracted to the unquestioned assumptions of practicing Zazen.  Only a truly and fully Enlightened Master can recognize their condition and act upon them in the right way for their actual potential.  But they will usually proudly reject a Real Teacher and choose an Unenlightened, but traditional disciplinarian who matches their own deep ignorance and clinging to the imaginary Transcendental.

The immediate cessation of both imaginary Spirituality and Self-deceptive Worldliness are the twin interfacing posts of the Great Gateway.